People who “do God, do good” more often than not,
according to a minister in the UK’s Coalition Government.

Baroness Warsi (pictured), the Minister for Faith, said that
David Cameron’s administration was one of the “most pro-faith governments in the
West”

And she said that faith was being put back at the
“heart of government,” as it was under Sir Winston Churchill and Baroness
Thatcher, the Daily Telegraph reports.

Baroness Warsi said: “More often than not, people
who do God do good.”

Speaking to an audience at the Churchill Archives
at the University of Cambridge, she said that Churchill and Thatcher would have
welcomed the Coalition’s promise to protect the right of town halls to hold
prayers and the creation of more faith schools under Michael Gove’s Free Schools
programme.

And she accused the previous Labour administration
of secularising public policy.

She said that Churchill saw totalitarian regimes
as “godless” while Thatcher regarded politics as second to Christianity in
defining society.

Baroness Warsi said: “We see flickers of
Churchill’s flame and echoes of Thatcher’s sermons in all we do.

“But this was never inevitable. When we came back
into power in 2010, I felt that some of the reverence for religion had
disappeared from politics. I found that the last government didn’t just refuse
to ‘do God’ – they didn’t get God either.”

She pointed out that the Coalition ruled out a ban
on the full-face veil out of respect for religious liberty, and cited the
welcome it gave to a ruling which saw Nadia Eweida win the right to wear a small
crucifix at work for British Airways.

Lady Warsi, a former chairman of the Conservative
Party, said that religious groups must be allowed to provide public services
without the state being “suspicious of their motives”.

“I know that Mrs Thatcher would have approved of
devolving power to faith communities,” Baroness Warsi said.

“As she once said: ‘I wonder whether the State
services would have done as much for the man who fell among thieves as the Good
Samaritan did for him?’ ”

Of Churchill she said: “He took the bigots to
task, berating one anti-Semitic politician and telling him his views did not
represent the Conservative Party, arguing that it was quite possible to be a
good Englishman and a good Jew.

“And that has inspired me again and again to say
that it is entirely possible to be British and Muslim.”

David Cameron is a Church of England worshipper
but has said his faith “comes and goes”.

Tony Blair, the former Labour prime minister, was
urged to keep his faith private by his aides. Alastair Campbell famously said:
“We don’t do God.”